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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22399450">Maybe It's Not My Place (To Say This)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegoodthebadandthenerdy/pseuds/thegoodthebadandthenerdy'>thegoodthebadandthenerdy</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>American Vandal (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Drinking, First Meetings, Ghosts, Internal Monologue, M/M, Misunderstandings, Prompt Fill, peter maldonado wont shut up even in his head GOD</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 02:36:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,567</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22399450</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegoodthebadandthenerdy/pseuds/thegoodthebadandthenerdy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Three things.</p><p>1. Peter had moved into his new apartment exactly a week and one day beforehand. </p><p>2. As a friend to the conglomeration that was the Wayback Boys, any chance for a celebration was to be taken, otherwise punishable by Friend Law (which meant taking shots of hot sauce out of Lucas's novelty shot glass collection.)</p><p>3. This was a chance for celebration if any of them had ever seen one.</p><p>All of this was, of course, to say the following: there was probable cause for <em>everything.</em></p><p>-</p><p>anonymous asked: eldonado au where they’re neighbors and one of them drunkenly breaks into the others apartment thinking it’s their own?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sam Ecklund/Peter Maldonado</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>61</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Maybe It's Not My Place (To Say This)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>this prompt has been in my askbox for,,, a v long time gksjfksjf</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Dude you're like, and adult now. Like a real adult," Dylan said over the phone. In the background, Peter could hear someone else talking, but after all these years he was still unsure on which of the WB it was. </p><p>"I'm literally twenty-three."</p><p>"Well, yeah," Dylan conceded, "But now you're twenty-three and don't live in your mom's attic or whatever."</p><p>"Dylan," Peter said with a small sigh, dropping his final box onto the new-to-him kitchen counter. It was mostly miscellaneous linens, so when he planted his head to the top of it, he at least didn't have to worry about breaking anything. "You're two years older than me <em>and</em> you still live with your mom. The inherent logic of your argument-"</p><p>"Peter? Shut up, man."</p><p>"Fine."</p><p>"Now you can hear me when I tell you the boys and I are going out tonight and <em>you're</em> coming with."</p><p>Peter immediately grimaced, seven years of friendship telling him that an uphill battle lay just ahead of him. </p><p>He'd been steadily unpacking all week inbetween school and work, which hadn't left him much time to do anything, let alone get a sufficient amount of sleep. He was exhausted, and it was Saturday, and he didn't have a shift in the morning--nor did he have any classes--and the very last way he wanted to spend his first free day in his new apartment was disgustingly hungover. One might say he didn't have to be disgustingly hungover, but there was no other choice after a night out with Dylan. Disgustingly hungover and regretting ever taking the call was just the way these things went; Peter had learned that one, two, or seven too many times.</p><p>"Ah, Dylan, no man, c'mon," Peter whined. Not slightly, not an edge, a full whine. "I'm exhausted."</p><p>"'<em>Ah, Peter, no man, c'mon</em>'," Dylan parroted back in a higher-pitched, rough approximation of his voice. "But you gotta come. You're a Wayback Boy, we gotta celebrate."</p><p>"No, I'm not."</p><p>"You're our camera guy so you totally are."</p><p>Defiantly, Peter set his chin. "I shirk the title. I shirk it."</p><p>"Shrek it all you want, man, just be there by nine."</p><p>---</p><p>The "usual place" was a bar that shared a parking lot with both a laundromat and a RadioShack, which was nauseating enough on its own, nevermind the alcohol and shitty karaoke that soon came along.</p><p>As his Uber pulled away, Peter sighed. It wasn't particularly long or drawn out, nor was it overly dramatic in the way he was fond of, it just…was. He was still tired, and his microwave dinner hadn't exactly sat right, and he was more preoccupied with the How It's Made style documentary he'd been watching than whatever was about to transpire in the bar in front of him.</p><p>He had been told on multiple occassions--though admittedly mostly in high school by girls as they applied their chapstick in in the reflection of their phone screens and tried to keep the pity out of their voice--that he got in his own way like, a lot. They would usually follow that with the instruction to 'loosen up,' 'live a little,' or 'get over yourself.' Sometimes it was a combo of two, but on one occasion it had been all three (thanks, Christa.)</p><p>All of those things, he relented, were both equally valid and currently repeating in his head like the hook to a so-bad-it's-good song. Shaking them was not an option, which was, coincidentally, the same he'd thought about the WB for years.</p><p>Peter knew he got in his own way, he knew he could be prickly and the opposite of forthright and sometimes kind of a dick. But he also knew that he knew how to have fun and enjoy time around people other than himself and yes, Jenna from his college-level Calculus, he knew how to get over himself and live a little--hell, a lot. You couldn't hang with the WB and not, though that was admittedly a standard he didn't use often (and for good reason, at that.)</p><p>But tonight it was needed. He had been cooped up all week, hadn't seen his friends face to face even longer than that, and it had even been a long, long time since he'd gone out.</p><p>(When he'd later look back he'd see that it had been a perfect storm.)</p><p>So with a confidence that was stuck somewhere between his chest and throat, he adjusted his glasses--because age had still not made him strong or wise enough to stick his finger near his eye every day--and his shirt that he'd pressed the wrinkles out of so hard he'd nearly <em>burnt</em> it, and he headed into the bar, determined to party and party hard.</p><p>---</p><p>Peter regretted like, a lot of things. Like a lot! He regretted staying home that one time his mom met Tom Hardy in a Whole Foods, he regretted going to his senior prom because everyone told him to, and he regretted giving away his favorite stuffed bear from when he was a kid in a bout of teenage rebellion.</p><p>But most importantly, he regretted drinking whatever it was that Ganj had shoved into his hands around the middle of the night. Why? Because he was pretty sure he went full Julia Stiles in <em>10 Things I Hate About You</em> atop a table after it hit his bloodstream and that there was the very high possibility someone had recorded it. </p><p>He was going to need to unremember that when he could fuly concentrate to do so.</p><p>He also regretted not having had the time to personalize his house key because <em>fuck</em> all keys looked the same! They all looked the same and none of them looked like they'd ever fit into the lock and maybe he should get a seperate keychain. Two keychains wasn't that excessive, he could pull it off.</p><p>"I could totally pull off two keychains," he mumbled to himself, shoving another key into the lock--fuck, when did he get so many keys?</p><p>After keying up the lock like someone's disgruntled ex for five excruciating minutes, he knew he had only a handful of options, and none of them were particularly enlightened.</p><p>He could try to catch Dylan's Uber and drunkenly crash on the Maxwell's couch for the night. While mortifying, it wasn't to say he hadn't done that before. Dylan's mom had probably seen him sleep off more hangovers than anyone's mother should have to see, so the embarrassment didn't come from that particular voyeur. No, it came in the form of him running through the streets, probably chasing the wrong car, maybe giving himself an asthma attack, and undoubtedly ending his life-long streak of never being detained.</p><p>So, second option--because in thinking over the first was to immediately dismiss it--he could just sleep in the hallway, leaned up against his door, and hope no one stole his wallet. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't exactly Nobel Prize winning, either. He hadn't had the chance to build a rapport with any of his neighbors and the last thing needed right now was for them to think he was the kind of guy who just hung out in the hallway, smelling of stale beer and his own indiscretions.</p><p>Which came to the third option: bring a neighbor into this, but try to take control of the narrative. Explain the situation as least drunkenly as possible, and ask for them to unlock his door.</p><p>As a backyard documentarian, Peter had trained himself to be impartial. Ish. Don't get involved in the story, don't bend the facts, etc upon etc. Which was fine, was great! He was great at that. (The half-baked, never really got off the ground plan to do a true crime doc to get Dylan exonerated for dick vandalism in high school notwithstanding. He hadn't <em>meant</em> to become lifelong best friends with him, okay?)</p><p>Anyway, he was great at that, but the thought of facing any of his neighbors, of explaining any of this in a way that sounded halfway decent, was too much. Who was he going to ask, Gabrielle from down the hall? Who he'd met once when he toured the place and just from that experience knew she had her shit together? Or that weird red-headed guy across the hall that almost kept him from signing the lease just so he didn't have to have any run-ins with him? </p><p>Or was he going to ask the guy that lived next door? The one with the nice laugh and just-okay enough music taste Peter didn't complain when it bled through their shared wall on the few occasions he'd heard it when he was moving stuff in? The one whose name he didn't actually know, but had a five point plan to find out because he got nervous around people he was attracted to and thus overcomplicated things when in their presence?</p><p>Yeah, fuck that. Absolutely fuck that.</p><p>He let his head thump against his door, not even bothering to groan. He should sue Dylan and Ganj for emotional damages. </p><p>(Lucas had shared his basket of wings and Spencer had walked him to his Uber so they were both off the hook.)</p><p>Lodging one hand on the doorknob, letting his eyes droop shut, and his weight settle against the door, Peter thought he had given up. Well and truly, fuck what his neighbors thought--hot ones included--he'd fall asleep right there and deal with the consequences as they presented themselves. He could live with his neighbors thinking whatever they wanted of him for a couple years until he inevitably moved away in shame. </p><p>Shame was something he was built for, being locked out of his apartment half-drunk and so tired he could cry was not.</p><p>In fact, he was halfway to calling his mom because comfort was comfort no matter where it came from when he grabbed the doorknob and gave it a hapless jiggle. Expecting nothing, he was pretty fucking surprised when it gave way. </p><p>"Thank you," he mumbled to no one in particular, moving headlong over the threshold and clipping the door shut. He could have sworn he'd locked it before he left, would have to implement a new routine to make sure he did going forward, but for the night he was grateful for the fuck up.</p><p>He lurched past the entryway, hand clattering across the short wall just to the right of the door. His keys fell from his hand onto the table, then his jacket seemed to tack itself to the hook beside it. Shuffling out of his shoes on the way to the couch, he left them haphazardly dashed beside the coffee table. The last thing he thought to remove was his glasses, which he rested comfortably next to the TV remote and the mug with tea dregs still in the bottom.</p><p>His foot cracked against a leg on the coffee table and he hissed between his teeth, the fleeting thought that it felt like someone had moved all his furniture an inch to the left crossing his mind. The same thought tried to throttle the life out of him when his ass hit the arm of the couch instead of the nearest cushion, but he really couldn't bother to care.</p><p>Chalking it up to the pitch blackness swallowing him up, he flopped back the rest of the way and set to making himself comfortable. Forget drinking a glass of water before going to sleep, or changing into his PJs, or even getting in his own bed. If he didn't sleep right then he thought all his systems were going to fail for a week, full stop.</p><p>And so fall asleep he did, one maroom throw pillow at his back and one tucked under the arm that wasn't strewn over his eyes. </p><p>---</p><p>A few corrections:</p><p>Peter didn't have a table situated at the junction of walls just inside his door. He had two boxes stacked one top of one another. For that matter, he didn't have a hook on the wall either (and wasn't even sure if that was something that the lease allowed.)</p><p>He also didn't have a TV (yet, he was gonna buy a new one after his next paycheck) and one of his biggest pet peeves was mugs with drink remainders being left out.</p><p>Even still, if that wasn't all enough: his coffee table still needed to be assembled and his couch was faced with the back to the near wall of the apartment instead of to the kitchen. It also wasn't blue and absolutely didn't have maroon throw pillows because who the fuck had maroon throw pillows? Martha Stewart? People who watched HGTV? Peter didn't watch HGTV, he liked fucking C-SPAN for crying out loud.</p><p>None of these things occurred to him though because again, full Julia Stiles, someone find him a nice Australian.</p><p>---</p><p>Peter came to with all the fanfare of something without a lot of fanfare. His head hurt, so he'd think on it, come up with a better analogy later.</p><p>For a minute, he laid there, eyelids still pressed together in two feather-light lines, eyelashes holding hands and conspiring to send him back to sleep.</p><p>And then he felt something tap his chest. Small, cylindrical, rounded on the end. He frowned and scratched where the feeling had lighted from, hoping to flick it away for another few minutes.</p><p>"Oh, thank fuck, you're not dead."</p><p>"What the fuck?" He pried his eyes open with all the earlier undone fanfare, snatching his arm back from his face to get a good look at his intruder who was, as it happened, poking him with a broom handle.</p><p>It took a second for the image of the tired man in <em>Star Wars</em> PJs holding a broom like a fencing blade to transpose over the image in his head he held of his hot neighbor, but when it did--aided finally by his glasses which had thumbprints and like, hot sauce on them?--it <em>did.</em></p><p>"What the fuck?" he repeated, just as sleepy-sounding, just as unsure, and increasingly pitching like he wanted to crawl into himself.</p><p>"Yeah, you know, that's a great question."</p><p>Peter worked his fingers under his glasses and kneaded as much sleep from his eyes as he could before returning moderately more bushy-tailed to the problem at hand. He didn't even know what the problem at hand was, actually, but if you asked anyone he knew they'd tell you that hadn't ever stopped him before.</p><p>"What're you doing?" he settled on, eyeing the broom because it seemed like the easiest thing to settle and afforded him not having to look his hot neighbor in the eye.</p><p>"What?" His neighbor looked down. "Oh, close-range combat isn't my strong suit," he said, tone utterly blasé. </p><p>"So you were planning to whack me over the head with it?"</p><p>"I mean, obviously. I didn't recognize you without the glasses, Clark Kent, I thought you'd taken a power nap on my couch before you planned to murder me."</p><p>Peter was trying to slyly check the clock on the wall--maybe he was still drunk, maybe this was a really weird sleep paralysis--when it dawned on him that he didn't have a clock on the wall. Again, he still wasn't entirely sure if he could hang anything up. </p><p>A shock of confusion, of fear next, sparked through him, chasing down his veins all the way to his fingertips as he pushed himself up faster than he should have. Head swimming, he tried to take in as much as he could at once, cataloguing everything he'd missed in the dark.</p><p>The floorplan was much the same, but the walls were more sandy than brown like his, and the kitchen cabinets were pale blue instead of white. </p><p>The kitchen was lived in, too, as opposed to his own that still looked brochure ready; one of the doors was cracked open, a box facedown on the piece of counter below it. There were magnets on the fridge holding up takeout menus and what looked like those little handouts they passed out at plays. On the bar that branched out just like it did in his apartment was a bowl with accompanying spoon and a jug of milk (whole, he noted with a wrinkle distaste.)</p><p>The living room was no different, with a modest entertainment center speckled with a respectable amount of photos (was that Gabrielle from 4B?), a couch that was firmer than Peter liked, and a beanbag chair all centered around a stubby coffee table.</p><p>It was nice, surprisingly color-coordinated, and definitely not Peter's apartment.</p><p>"Oh my god," he started, turning back to face his neighbor head on. "This isn't my apartment," he added dumbly.</p><p>He laughed, dropping the broom from attention and giving instead a winning smile. "At least we can rule amnesiac off the list. You live next door, right? Pe..ter?" he stumbled uncomfortably, watching the tick of Peter's face before clenching the victory.</p><p>"Yeah, yes, sorry." He thrusted his hand out, unknowingly reverting to the presence he kept during an interview of all things. "Peter Maldonado."</p><p>The other took his hand and demolished his five point plan in stride. "Samuel Ecklund, but <em>usually</em> the people that sleep on my couch call me Sam."</p><p>"Right, Sam," Peter repeated, because he knew to never think that a situation couldn't get worse, and forgetting Sam's name would most assuredly make the matter at hand unbearably worse. "I'm really sorry, again. I couldn't get into my apartment--which I guess makes sense since it was…your apartment. Uh, anyway, the door was unlocked and I was, like, stupidly drunk-"</p><p>"Fuck," Sam muttered without any real heat, eyes darting to the door. "It was?"</p><p>Eyebrows pinched together, Peter nodded slowly. "Yeah, so I thought I'd just forgotten to lock it behind me. I promise I'm not usually like this, y'know, breaking and entering and appropriating couches."</p><p>"See, what you're saying sounds weirdly sane, which makes <em>me</em> about to tell you my apartment's haunted and the asshole ghost unlocks my door all the time sound off the fucking wall, man."</p><p>"<em>What?</em>"</p><p>Peter wondered, for a split second, if <em>he</em> should be worried about getting murdered.</p><p>"I moved in like eight months ago and I guess I pissed off a ghost? I don't know, I thought it had stopped." Sam looked aptly put out for like, accidentally deleting the new episode of his favorite show from the DVR, not for his front door getting randomly unlocked in the middle of the night.</p><p>"Shouldn't you get more locks then?" he ventured. "Make it harder?"</p><p>"See! That's what I said, but Gabi told me I was just gonna make my ghost super intelligent and that much harder to live with. She's probably right and I'm headed on a one way ticket to starring in the next <em>Paranormal Activity,</em> but it's whatever, I'll just adapt."</p><p>"Maybe if you turned your music down it wouldn't be so mad," Peter quipped as he stretched his arms over his head to pop his back. His shirt fell back into place around his hips and his hands fell back to his sides, waiting on a response from Sam who seemed to be digesting the taunt.</p><p>His smile turned from winning to blinding as a laugh burbled out from behind his lips--like an actor peeking around the curtain, Peter thought. "Yeah, maybe," he agreed as Peter headed for the door to gather his belongings, shoes in hand for his walk of shame, jacket hung over his arm. "Uh, y'know, you should have my number--just in case it's ever too loud, you can remind me to turn it down. Just 'cause, y'know, if ectoplasm starts showing up on our shared wall it wrecks your security deposit, too."</p><p>Peter smiled down at his keys, a small thing, but just as real as Sam's. "Or if my place starts showing signs of odd activity?" he joked, turning over his unlocked phone. Dutifully, Sam puttered out his number and shot himself a text--his phone chiming from the other room to prove it.</p><p>Seemingly catching up with what Peter had said, he turned oddly serious, following Peter to the door and leaning in the doorframe as Peter paused in front of his own. "Hey, you never know what'll happen."</p><p>Peter shook his head fondly as he unlocked his door on the first try. <em>No,</em> he thought, <em>you never do.</em></p><p>"Can I come back after I've like, showered and eaten something other than hot wings and bar pretzels. We can start over and I can, like, knock on your door this time?" he asked, scratching at his hairline with his thumb while looking up from his lock.</p><p>Sam, with his arms over his chest and his face turned to delight, nodded an affirmative. "Yeah, man, come back whenever you want."</p><p>---</p><p>A few things:</p><p>Peter checked the lease and Sam was for sure in violation of at least two clauses. Also, he did eventually assemble his coffee table, but not without the help of Gabi from 4B (who was dating Jenna from Calculus, as it turned out.)</p><p>Oh, and speaking of, he did end up going back to Sam's. Like a lot. Turned out he did know how to get over himself and live a little after all.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>im on tumblr @foxmulldr where occasionally i get back to my av roots!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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